Indeed, it was only the thought that Amos Baverstock or one of the others would get up to go, and then discover me, that made me shift from where I had been hiding; and no sooner was I out of earshot than I set off running as if pursued by fifty fiends. I never ran so fast before or since. Over the sand-hills, stumbling amidst the shingle, breaking my way through gorse and hedgerow, I came at last to John Bannister's cabin, lying in a hollow by the sea.
"Mr. Bannister!" I cried. "Mr. Bannister! Something dreadful is about to happen!"
I was, I suppose, half blinded by my running; or I had not the sense to look about me. I stood before the opening of the cabin, wringing my hands and crying out like a fool:
"Mr. Bannister! Mr. Bannister! Come quickly!"
I had for answer neither the sight of his great strength nor the familiar sound of his voice, but just the wash of the sea at high tide beyond the ridge where the buckthorn grew, a great rhythmical, breathing sound, as if a giant were slumbering.
I was more afraid than ever when I realised that he was not there, and it might take time to find him; for, befogged as my wits were, I knew well enough that the occasion was one that would admit of no delay.
I ran straight to the beach, and looked to the eastward and westward. For a moment I had hoped to find him, for he would sometimes bathe in the sea at that hour of the day; but a glance or so was enough to tell me I should not find him there.
I wandered for a while somewhat aimlessly amongst the shrubberies that crowned the margin of the sand-hills and the shingle, and then returned to the cabin. As things happened, I must have done so in the nick of time; for, when I had searched in odd corners, as if looking for a hidden thimble, instead of a man of six-foot-four, I went to the threshold, and looking out beyond the gorse, beheld the tall figure of Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, strolling towards me, swinging in his hand his silver-mounted Malacca cane.
I did not know whether or not he had seen me. It was sufficient for the moment that I had no way of escape. The cabin-as I have said-had been built in a hollow, and to cross the ridge that encompassed it would bring me into full view of Mr. Forsyth.
On the other hand, I could think of nowhere to hide. I stood for a moment irresolute, with clenched fists, cudgelling my brains and wishing that I was anywhere else upon the wide face of the earth. Then I heard a footstep on the shingle without, and as I drew back into the shade of the hut, I saw the man's shadow cast upon the threshold.
I looked about me in a wild and silly way, and then without a thought dived under the great fur sleeping-bag that lay ruffled against the wall.
Forsyth entered. I could not see him, but I could hear him moving to and fro, and once he even trod upon my foot. Then I heard his voice, raised in a kind of drawling sing-song, as if he called to someone at a distance.
"Come on," he sang. "The way's clear. The dog's out of his kennel."
A full minute may have elapsed. On such occasions, time counts for next to nothing. But, presently, I was aware that, besides myself, there were three persons in that small place, and one of them was Amos Baverstock.
"Here's our chance," said he. "Joshua, keep watch from without. He may not be far away, and it would be a rough-and-tumble business if he caught us in the act. And now, sir, help me to find the map. The thing must be somewhere in this hut, unless he carries it always on his person."
And at those words was I made to realise that, as sure as I had been christened Richard Treadgold in the little church at Middleton, I had done a foolish thing and was like to be made to pay for it.
For Amos Baverstock was come to search for a certain map, the significance of which I then, of course, knew nothing. Whether or not he would find this map was a question of itself; but there was no sort of a question within the bounds of probability that he could look for long and fail to discover me. And then, in truth, the fat would be in the fire.
CHAPTER III-THE MAP
I expected every moment to be caught, to be jerked forth from my hiding-place like a landed fish. In the course of their searching they must sooner or later move the sleeping-bag, and I would be exposed.
It occurs to me that fear must be one of the strangest of emotions; for I can honestly say that, now that I was in this hopeless and perilous predicament, I was no longer afraid. Certain that I must fall into the hands of Amos Baverstock, equally uncertain of what then would be my lot, I was resigned to my fate; I was long past apprehension. I still thought of Bannister, and wondered concerning the map for which Amos and Forsyth were looking, but for myself I now cared not a snap of the fingers what became of me; and this attitude of mind I preserved throughout the next eventful moments, else I had never acted as I did.
For Amos never found me on his own account. No doubt he would have done so in a very little time, had not Forsyth, almost at once, struck upon the very map for which the two were searching.
"What's this!" exclaimed Forsyth. "It seems the thing we want."
"Where?" cried Amos, who, I judged, snatched it from the other's hand.
"That's it!" he almost shouted. "The parchment map copied from that made ages ago by Villac Umu, the High Priest of the Incas of Peru. Bannister has translated it, and marked the route in red ink. It's all plain as daylight."
I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was wildly excited. He spread out the map upon the little table in the centre of the cabin, and, feeling secure since Joshua Trust was keeping watch, spoke breathlessly to Forsyth, relating the matter in such detail that then and there I was made a party to the whole vile conspiracy-or as much of it as there was any need for me to know.
"When the ancient Peruvians fled before the advance of the Pizarros," he explained, "they carried their treasures across the mountains. These they hid in two places: one, which is called the Little Fish, consists of all manner of earthenware utensils; the other-the Big Fish-is composed of golden ornaments and ingots. I have heard it said by some that the Little Fish is in Bolivia; by others, as far north as the Amazonas Territory-the truth being that no man living knows. It was John Bannister himself who discovered the secret of the Greater Treasure, or the Big Fish, as the natives call it. He lived for years among the wild savages who inhabit the forests about the eastern foothills of the Andes; and there, I believe, he came across some priestly descendants of those who had served the Incas. It was high up among the Conomamas, to the south of the great Region of the Woods, that I first fell in with Bannister. I was there prospecting for gold, but I had never dreamed of such a gold-mine as the Greater Treasure of the Incas. Bannister never told me that he had learned the secret from the priests, but I made so free as to inspect the map, when I believed him to be sleeping."
"But is this safe?" asked Forsyth. "Supposing Bannister returns?"
"There is nothing to fear," said Amos. "Time's our own. Joshua is on watch upon the sand-hills, and can see him coming half a mile away. We are as safe here as anywhere."
"Well, then, go on with your story," said the other. "You saw the map yourself?"
"No more than glanced at the thing before he had me by the throat and well-nigh strangled me," cried Amos. "After that we parted company, though I followed his track, and three times tried to kill him."
I heard Mr. Forsyth laugh in his silly, affected way.
"You do not mince your words," said he. "And I think I like you for it all the better. So you tried to murder him, and failed?"
"I did not say 'murder,'" grumbled Amos. "You can do no worse than kill in the great Region of the Woods; and whether you slay a jaguar, a monkey or man, it is much the same in the end. But to kill a man like John Bannister is no such easy matter. He has the ear of a panther and the eye of a bird, and he strikes like the coral snake-silent and deadly-and for those self-same reasons, the story I am telling you must now turn something against myself. For I began the business by hunting John Bannister in the Wilderness; but, before the game was a week old, it was he that was hunting me, and hunting me, too, day and night, from the Putumayo to Bolivia, from the Amazon to the sea.
"I sought safety, at last, in the port of Lima, where I was sheltered by some pretence of Law and Justice; and there I joined forces with friend Joshua and three other kindred spirits who now lie unburied, their bones picked by the vultures.
"Well, then," Amos went on, "we five put our heads together and talked the question out. It was plain to us that, since Bannister was such a tough nut to crack, it were safer and simpler to go straight to the fountain head, as the saying goes, and see what could be done with the priests. I guessed from what Bannister had told me, that the Peruvians were a weak-kneed, cowardly lot, and thought it would not be difficult to frighten them into telling us all they knew. But we had to search the woods for months before we found them, living in the midst of black ignorance and superstition; and by then-would you believe it! – Bannister had got wind of our intentions, and had come back upon his own trail, crossing the mountains and descending into the Region of the Woods.
"He turned up in time to ruin all our plans. His very presence gave the priests the courage they had lacked. There was a stiff fight, and we, having the worst of it, were obliged to beat a quick retreat to the foothills, though we carried with us a hostage. So far as this man was concerned, I took a leaf from the book of the Spaniards. I knew that Pizarro had not gained all his knowledge by fair words and promises. I tortured the wretch, until he shrieked for mercy and promised that he would guide us to Cahazaxa's Tomb, upon the very crestline of the Andes, where he swore to us the Greater Treasure was hid. Thither we went, to find that the rascal had lied to us. A few golden ornaments there were, in a vault cut in the living rock, at the end of a narrow passage, and amongst these was the ancient sceptre of the Incas, but the lot were not worth the price of our journey. Moreover, John Bannister himself had had the audacity to follow us. Night by night, he hovered about our bivouac, hoping to deprive us of our hostage. So I set my mind to work to finish him; and as fortune had it, the old Tomb was as good as a rat-trap. For there was a great boulder at the mouth of the passage, which might be rolled down-hill to block the entrance; and even then it was as much as Joshua and I could do. We fooled John Bannister to enter the Tomb by making a show of moving camp and leaving the Peruvian behind. However, when we thought we had caged him, we found to our great dismay that we had under-estimated the man's colossal strength; for he rolled back the boulder as though it were nothing, and came down upon us like a raging lion."
Amos paused a moment in his narrative. Listening eagerly for what was yet to come, I heard distinctly the disgusting noise of the chewing of one of his long, black cigars.
"We were unprepared for that," he continued. "Indeed, thinking we had got him safely caught, to starve to death or shoot himself, we were standing before the entrance to the passage without our arms; and before we could master him, our party of five had been reduced to two. It was Joshua who ended the affair. We had looted the Tomb of the little treasure that was there; and Joshua snatched up the golden sceptre of the Incas and struck down John Bannister, whom that night we left for dead."
"And what of the map?" asked Forsyth.
"We searched him, but never found it. He may have left it with the priests, or hidden it somewhere in the forest. Two years later, I again journeyed to the Region of the Woods, and found out from the priests that Bannister had taken it away with him, after he had returned to the Wilderness from Cahazaxa's Tomb."
Amos had calmed down by degrees whilst he related the whole story to Mr. Forsyth; but now, quite suddenly, he became as frantically excited as before.
"For two years I have hunted for the man," he cried; "and I found him here by chance. I want nothing but the map, to know where the Greater Treasure has lain hidden for more than four centuries, and to learn how to get there. See here!" he shouted; "the place is far to the north, near the valley of the Yapura River. The treasure of the Incas was carried four hundred miles from Cuzco!"
"What more could we want?" laughed Forsyth.
"Why, nothing else," said Amos. "This map's worth more to us than the keys to the vaults of the Bank of England."
I heard a sound like the rustle of paper or parchment, from which I judged that Amos flourished the map in his hand. And then it was that I did a thing so bold that I have never ceased to be amazed at my own audacity.
I had passed from sheer fright to cold deliberation. I cared not two pins for my own safety; and though I was still in dread of Amos, I thought not once of him, but of John Bannister, whose very shadow I almost worshipped. Besides, it must be understood, I was already caught like a fly in the web of these adventures. I had listened, as to a story, to all that Amos had said, and had tried to figure in my mind's eye the Greater Treasure, all glittering in the dust, Cahazaxa's Tomb and the dark Region of the Woods. I knew, from what I had heard, that if all this wealth belonged to any Christian man, that man was John Bannister himself and never Amos Baverstock. Why Bannister was content to live as he did, when he could be master of such riches, was a circumstance I could not then explain, but which I was wise enough to see was no concern of mine. Upon one thing was I well determined, with a kind of blind pig-headedness that might have led to my own undoing-and that was that Amos should never take away with him the map.
"Gold!" he cried. "Gold! We'll wade knee-deep in it!"
And at that, I sprang from under the sleeping-bag and hurled myself straight at him whom I so truly feared.
Both he and Mr. Forsyth were too surprised to do little else but gape, which gave me the chance I wanted, to snatch the parchment from his hand.
I do not think I could have been much quicker; but he was not to be taken unawares. The parchment was old, and must have been half torn already, for, when he pulled one way and I the other, the thing came in half. And then, even before Baverstock had time to drop an oath, I was past the opening of the cabin and racing like a madman through the gorse.
CHAPTER IV-KIDNAPPED
While I went over the sand-hills like a hare, I looked back once and saw Amos running, his face all screwed up in fury, and his black eyes as if they were on fire. At the door of the cabin stood Mr. Forsyth, shaking his Malacca cane at me, but never troubling himself to move so much as an inch.
I knew from the first that I had the legs of both of them, that Amos could never catch me though I carried a pound weight on either foot. And I believe, like a fool, I laughed, thinking myself secure; and when I pulled through a hedgerow that cut off the sand-drift from the open fields, I found myself face to face with Joshua.
For my own excuse, it may be urged that I had had much to think of in the last few minutes; and if I had remembered my friendship with Bannister, I had at least forgotten the very existence of Joshua Trust. But there he was, as plain as a pike-staff, about thirty yards to the front of me.
I pulled up and stared at him; and to my surprise he made no movement, until I heard the voice of Amos from behind me.
"Catch the young fiend! Shoot, Joshua, before he gets away!"
And at that I jumped to the right, straight into a rabbit-hole, and pitched on to my head.
I lay where I was for a few seconds without moving, for I was a trifle shaken by the fall. I could still hear Amos, cursing and swearing horribly, and Joshua, beating along the hedge with his stick. For all that, neither could I see them nor could they see me; for I was flat upon my face in a bunch of thistles, which was near as great a torment as a swarm of bees.
I knew from the first that sooner or later I would have to run for it; and the only thing that held me back from bolting then and there was the certain knowledge that Joshua Trust would shoot. I write with natural reluctance whatsoever stands something to the credit of myself; but, even at the moment, I thought more of the parchment than of my own skin. For I still held the crumpled fragment of the map in my right hand, gripping it tightly as if it were a running-cork.
I heard Joshua's voice quite near to me; and knowing that he must find me if I remained where I was, I resolved to take my chance. But first, in case of possible misfortune, I stuffed my portion of the parchment map to the full length of an arm down the very rabbit-hole that had tripped me up. And as I did so, a thought flashed through my mind: that it was, indeed, a strange circumstance that half the secret of the Greater Treasure of the Incas of old Peru, who four hundred years ago had foiled the greedy Spaniards, should lie hidden in a rabbit-scrape in Sussex.
And then I sprang to my feet and trusted to Providence to help me. Joshua was in front of me and threw out his arms to catch me. But I dived beneath them, swerved away from him, and ran for my very life.
I heard Amos shouting like a madman. Out of the corner of an eye, I saw Joshua Trust fumbling in the region of his belt for the pistol I knew he carried.
It was neck or nothing then. I had the sense not to run straight, but to dodge here and there like a snipe; and as like as not I owed my life to that. For I found out afterwards that Trust was a dead shot, who seldom missed his mark.
As I fled, the sharp crack of his pistol broke upon the silence, scaring the sea birds from the beach. The bullet sang past my head and clipped the lobe of an ear, so that the blood ran down my neck. And thus was I, Dick Treadgold, blooded, in both metaphor and fact, to a life of peril and adventure.
Whilst Joshua reloaded, I had a chance to double the distance between us. I headed inland, away from the shore, and made in the direction of the village which was more than a mile away. Straight in front of me was a clump of trees, and I hoped to gain this before Trust could fire again.
Though the country that lies south of the Downs, from the west of Worthing to the ancient city of Chichester, is, in the main, as flat as a table, this particular clump of trees was perched upon a rounded hillock-though you would call it that nowhere but in western Sussex; and therefore, when I gained the trees, I could survey the land on every side of me to the extent of a good square mile.
To the south were Joshua and Amos Baverstock, hastening after me, the latter some way behind his longer-legged companion. To the north, a little to the east, was the sharp belfry of the church in the village I would gain: and, to the west, was the lane that leads to Arundel.
I had paused for a moment, not so much for breath as to get my bearings, to select the shortest route; and in this brief moment, I became aware of a circumstance that caused my heart to leap for joy. For, coming toward me, by way of a footpath that led across the fields, carrying under an arm a brown paper parcel that I knew to contain his weekly stock of provisions, I recognised the great, tall figure of John Bannister himself.
All thoughts of my pursuers were instantly banished from my mind. What cared I now for Amos Baverstock and all his threats and oaths! I was conscious of nothing else but the bald fact that a friend in need was close at hand-and one, moreover, who would soon get the best of Master Baverstock-and so great was my elation that I took no heed of a dog-cart which, at that moment, came rattling round a bend in the road.
I called loudly upon Bannister by name, though he was then scarcely within hearing, and dashed down the hill before Joshua could have reached the trees from the other side.
The road in that place was bounded by a wooden fence, and balancing myself upon the top of this, I shouted frantically to Bannister.
"Come quick!" I cried. "Amos Baverstock is here!"
I was answered, before the last word had left my lips, by a shot fired at the back of me. The bullet splintered the woodwork of the very bar upon which I was standing; and, startled into action, I jumped into the road.
Immediately I had to turn back again no less quickly, to avoid being run down by the dog-cart, the driver of which reined up with a jerk.
I looked up at him at once, thinking to recognise some farmer that I knew; but, instead of that, I set eyes, to my amazement, upon Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, with his side-whiskers and his greased moustache.
I remembered then-too late as things turned out-that the road curved seaward near the place where I had first discovered Amos and his friends. Had I thought of it at all, I must have known that they had never walked to that lonely spot. They had driven there, to leave the horse and cart upon the road, whilst they settled themselves at a little distance to discuss how best they might attack John Bannister, in his cabin by the sea. Moreover, had I known then as much as I know now of Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, I should never have supposed for a single instant that he could be as idle as he seemed, that he would have remained doing nothing before the opening of the cabin, whilst his friends were pursuing me.
For Gilbert Forsyth, a fop to all appearances and a lazy dude, was in reality a man of action. He said not a word to me, but when he had reined in his horse, he lifted his whip, and cut me down as if I were a thistle.
It was a long tandem whip-and tandems were much in fashion in the days when all this happened. The lash wrapped itself about my legs like a living snake; so that when Forsyth jerked the whip backwards with all his force, I was thrown violently on my face upon the hard, dusty road.
I tried to get to my feet as quick as I could, but had done no more than struggle to my knees, when Forsyth struck me upon the crown of my head with the heavy handle of the whip.
It was a cruel blow and a stout one; and I know that if I did not actually lose consciousness I, at least, saw the trees swing upward into the sky, and the white road upon which I lay rush round and round, like the spokes of a revolving wheel.
And then the next thing I knew was that Forsyth had me by the throat. Though I was then young, I was not a weakling. I struggled desperately, and might, perhaps, have freed myself, had not Joshua Trust arrived upon the scene in time to settle the affair the wrong way for me.
For he gathered me up in his arms, and I was held as if I were encased in iron. I shouted frantically, but that was of no more help than the cackling of a hen. I was lifted bodily into the cart.
I heard Joshua shout to Amos: "Run like mad! Here's Bannister himself!"
Forsyth had climbed upon the box. Trust was on the back seat, with me held like a squalling babe in his arms. The cart tilted forward a bit, as Amos scrambled up and took his seat beside the driver.
I heard Forsyth crack his whip, and immediately the horse started off at a canter, the cart rocking like a boat in a heavy sea. I continued to shout, until Joshua swore at me and clapped one of his great hands across my mouth. And the last thing I saw, as the cart turned into the main road to Littlehampton, was John Bannister breaking through the boundary fence, and then standing quite still and upright in the middle of the road, staring after us, with his brown paper parcel still under his arm.